Database security beyond Guardium- GreenSQL

With all of the buzz around IBM’s purchase of Guardium and the multiple that it may have entailed, everyone is assuming that this will set off a feed frenzy of “consolidation” in the database security and database firewall market. Obviously, Imperva is a name that keeps coming up and I am sure there are people sniffing around there. But today I wanted to highlight a different option in database security. As is so often the case especially in security, there is an open source alternative to database firewall, SQL injection and other database security needs.

A company and project called GreenSQL has been around for a few years now. They have led the development of a GPL licensed solution that currently works with MySQL and Postgres databases today. In the near future there are plans to support Oracle and MS SQL in perhaps a commercial version with premium support and high availability.  I spoke today with David Maman, the CTO of GreenSQL.  David was one of the early folks at Fortinet.  He and fellow co-founder, Yuli Stremovsky, formerly of RSA have been leading the GreenSQL development since the beginning. 

Recently they were able to secure 1.5 million in venture funding from Magma, one of the leading Israeli based VC firms. Prior to the money raise they hired a CEO, Amir Sadeh, and Hadar Eshel, VP of Sales and Marketing, as well as a few more developers.  It looks like GreenSQL will be moving beyond just an open source project to a dual model.  The commercial version should be out in March or April. 

Database security is still one of the fastest growing segments in security. I don’t think the Guardium deal is going to halt entry of new players in this field.  GreenSQL could be coming in at just the right time!